29-year-old Industrial Designer Lewis Holden ths week launched ‘Ovafly’. A 3D printable cricket thrower designed to mimic the perfect cricket bowl and help cricket and sports enthusiasts around the world perfect their powerstroke. Ovafly will give newcomers in the 3d printing community a series of guided video tutorials, a detailed instruction manual and printer setting for each component all for £25.00 (First 2000 backers). The project aims to raise funding on Kickstarter and make the patent available to manufacturers via licensing.

Ovafly works by simply loading tennis balls onto a slaloming travel track that gives the user 10 seconds in which to walk away from the device, before it drops onto a trigger and is propelled to the batsman. The spring-loaded design with patent pending status is made from PETG filament; it is a unique mechanical design superior to static objects that will no doubt threaten to change the 3D printing community forever.

Ovafly is the brainchild of Lewis Holden who has spent over four years developing the product from his garage at home in Norfolk. He said “Ovafly offers an alternative to electric ball feeding systems which do not recreate merited practice – by replicating the visual cues and experience of real bowling; this solves many limitations of current ball throwing aids including cost, portability, use of machine balls and electricity”.

The product is aimed at the growth and grassroots development of sports in the inner cities, rural areas and emerging cricket playing nations and provides an eco-friendly and inexpensive training aid for all.

Ovafly represents a game changing moment in industry 4.0 as the funds raised allow 3D printers to be finally used as a tool for mass production – building operations around a ‘print by night’ ‘assemble by day’ manufacturing model. Ovafly is available on kickstarter.com in the technology/3d printing section right now at this link – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ovaflyballlauncher/ovafly-tennis-ball-launcher-3d-printed-solo-batting-practice